To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

lbmaian · Oct 28, 2016

fasquardon said:
OK, then you are asking about Centaurs - Centaur A is the refit. Centaur B will be refit #2.

Gah I keep mixing up Centaur-A and Centaur-B, since it wasn't too long ago that we were questioning what the first refit suffix would be.

Kelenas said:
Perhaps because some of you seem irrationally focused on wasting various resources on making a bad design slightly less bad, rather than thinking of how to use the same resources to strengthen the fleet and Federation in various other ways? And I'm trying to fight that because I'd rather not have it come and bite us in the ass some five, ten, or fifteen years down the line?

Having 8 Constellations and 4+ Centaur-As is better than having only 8 slightly better Constellations, and would cost us about the same amount of PP to get going. I really don't get what's so difficult to understand about that.

For the Constellation, I'm waiting for at least one of the following before prioritizing a refit:
a) a better refit - should be possible, have postulated refit designs in the SDB thread that make it actually unequivocally better than a Centaur-A
b) a pp reduction - might be possible as time goes on
c) member world coordination office provides some sort of incentive to refit their ships as well, since altogether, there are 17 Constellations (and 32 Mirandas and 7 Centaurs)

fasquardon · Oct 28, 2016

Kelenas said:
Having 8 Constellations and 4+ Centaur-As is better than having only 8 slightly better Constellations, and would cost us about the same amount of PP to get going. I really don't get what's so difficult to understand about that.

Because of statistics!

2D6 Probabilities | The Dark Fortress

The Constellation has a defense of 4, which makes it twice as good at responding to events in a case where the Constellation and the Centaur are both rolling on D alone.

It's also cheap in technicians, which are our biggest bottleneck at the moment.

Having 8 refit Constellations takes NO new crew and enormously improves the ability of our fleet to actually patrol the Federation. Adding 4+ Centaur As does not provide anywhere near that boost and requires more crew to boot.

Add to this that it is a common class among member fleets.

Kelenas said:
And I'm trying to fight that because I'd rather not have it come and bite us in the ass some five, ten, or fifteen years down the line?

Well how about some actual suggestions, rather than the incessant Constellation hate?

It's a tool not a pagan idol! It requires neither veneration nor burning.

fasquardon

MS-21H 'Hawke' · Oct 28, 2016

Glassware said:
It is admittedly kind of disturbing that Sulu has basically declared war on Cardassia and is conducting black ops missions without our knowledge...

It's also in defense of the Federation, and it's the type of thinking we need...besides they're still finding new and amazing things out there.

fasquardon said:
*Snip*

I'm somewhat on your side on this, because I want the Constellations to be the best they can be in any case because it looks like the Cardassians are getting a bit too big for their britches. That, and replacing them with Connie-Bs totally isn't a safe option, again; due to the Cardassian Agression.

but on the other side of the coin, I am on their side too. The Constellation as an underpowered cruiser when we really DO NOT NEED an Underpowered cruiser on the front lines. As stated in the previos paragraph, my initial idea was to do a rolling Phase-out/replace with the Constellations and Connie-Bs...but with the Cardassians being as aggressive as they are, I would settle for the Constellations being removed from their Front Line Role as time goes on, and work to scuttle them later(hopefully a time with the Cardassians tamer than they are now, or outright subdued). We do have until 2030 with the Connie-B, and even that limit might be fudged when the time comes.

pheonix89 · Oct 28, 2016

Glassware said:
It is admittedly kind of disturbing that Sulu has basically declared war on Cardassia and is conducting black ops missions without our knowledge...

Not really. They declared shadow war on us first. We're just much better at it then they anticipated, because it turns out that variable exotic physics cannon we call a main deflector is excellent when you need completely deniable destruction. That ship and base WERE destroyed by a solar event, just an artificial one, but good luck figuring that out.

Derek58 · Oct 28, 2016

fasquardon said:
Well how about some actual suggestions, rather than the incessant Constellation hate?

He's all ready given them, I believe.

And if not I have an easy one: Constitution refits and some more Centaurs until the Renaissance finishes, then we begin phasing both LCs out slowly for the Renaissance.

Briefvoice · Oct 28, 2016

Glassware said:
It is admittedly kind of disturbing that Sulu has basically declared war on Cardassia and is conducting black ops missions without our knowledge...

I admit, it was a little disconcerting to realize that last Snakepit when we were getting grilled about the Cardassian cruiser, Sulu was standing there right beside us knowing the whole story and probably smirking to himself. (Check the 2306 Snakepit; as head of the Explorer Corps he's the one who accompanies us to these things.) He's just lucky that Betazed didn't enter the Federation a year earlier, or there would have been telepathic Councillors around and he never could have gotten away with that.

fasquardon · Oct 28, 2016

Derek58 said:
He's all ready given them, I believe.

And if not I have an easy one: Constitution refits and some more Centaurs until the Renaissance finishes, then we begin phasing both LCs out slowly for the Renaissance.

But replacing the Constellation will be expensive in techs and the Centaur is much less capable (though tougher).

fasquardon

Derek58 · Oct 28, 2016

fasquardon said:
But replacing the Constellation will be expensive in techs and the Centaur is much less capable (though tougher).

fasquardon

Retiring/scrapping Constitutions, Centaurs, and maybe even Mirandas as we build Renaissances will go a long way towards alleviating that. And we can also spend pp to expand the whole Academy and Science Academy to get more Techs individually.

Request Academy Expansion, 35pp (Gain +.5 Officers/Enlisted/Techs throughput)
Request Science Academy Expansion, 20pp (Gain +1 Techs throughput)

Kelenas · Oct 28, 2016

fasquardon said:
Because of statistics!

2D6 Probabilities | The Dark Fortress

The Constellation has a defense of 4, which makes it twice as good at responding to events in a case where the Constellation and the Centaur are both rolling on D alone.

Which doesn't matter when it fails those events because it's insufficient in other areas, such as P.

It's also cheap in technicians, which are our biggest bottleneck at the moment.

False; given its capabilities and how it compares to other ships we can build with similar stat totals (if in different spreads), the Constellation isn't cheap in Technicians, it's expensive in Officers and Enlisted.

Having 8 refit Constellations takes NO new crew and enormously improves the ability of our fleet to actually patrol the Federation. Adding 4+ Centaur As does not provide anywhere near that boost and requires more crew to boot.

Erm, no; having 12 ships is vastly better than having only 8, because we can shuffle the additional ships around as needed, each ship translates into an additional chance to participate in and solve events, and each ship also presents a very significant increase in our combat power in case of a war with Cardassia or anyone else.
Not to mention that setting up the infrastructure and income to build those additional ships improves our capabilities more the longer we have it, where resources invested into the Constellation is dead money.

Add to this that it is a common class among member fleets.

Then they can develop their own refit and we sell them ours once we no longer need them. Simple as that.

Well how about some actual suggestions, rather than the incessant Constellation hate?

You have absolutely no fucking idea how much this single sentence of yours makes my blood boil. Because I already HAVE given suggestions. MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES.
I am seriously tempted to simply drop you on my ignore list, because if you don't even pay any fucking attention to my posts, then there is absolutely no point in actually having any sort of discussion with you, or pay any attention to yours, and I can save myself the time and aggravation.

Derek58 said:
He's all ready given them, I believe.

YES, THANK YOU!

And if not I have an easy one: Constitution refits and some more Centaurs until the Renaissance finishes, then we begin phasing both LCs out slowly for the Renaissance.

Which is pretty much exactly what I've been preaching from the get-go. Pretty much everyone agreed that the Constellation was crap as it was, but we needed a stopgap measure to bridge the time until the Renaissance was finished, and the chosen stopgap was the Constitution-B refit due to its superior stats. Maybe the Constellation would've been chosen if we'd already known about the member fleets back at the time of that vote and taken them into account, but we didn't, and the Constitution-B is what was picked.

Trying to backtrack and do the Constellation as well will do nothing but hurt us in the long run, because we could be using those PP, along with the resources and berth space, to improve our shipbuilding and/or crew-training infrastructure, expand our fleet with more modern ships, both now and in the future, and various other things.

SuperSonicSound · Oct 28, 2016

Rennie wont be done for 10 years or so. scrapping constellations or connies to build rennies is not remotely an option.

Muramasa · Oct 28, 2016

[X] Rear Admiral Patricia Chen

MS-21H 'Hawke' · Oct 28, 2016

SuperSonicSound said:
Rennie wont be done for 10 years or so. scrapping constellations or connies to build rennies is not remotely an option.

What bothers me is that he included the Centaur there, and saying 'maybe' the Miranda.... I could see doing a rolling replacement on the Constellations and MAYBEE the Connie-Bs when the Reni comes into service...but we need modern escorts, and the Miranda is not that.

Derek58 · Oct 28, 2016

SuperSonicSound said:
Rennie wont be done for 10 years or so. scrapping constellations or connies to build rennies is not remotely an option.

I know that, that's why I said 'as we build Reniassances'.

Void Stalker · Oct 28, 2016

Derek58 said:
Retiring/scrapping Constitutions, Centaurs, and maybe even Mirandas as we build Renaissances will go a long way towards alleviating that. And we can also spend pp to expand the whole Academy and Science Academy to get more Techs individually.

Why would we keep mirandas and scrap Centaurso. The Centaur is a superior ship to the Miranda. Also Centaur is our escort class, Renaissance is a cruiser class.

HearthBorn · Oct 28, 2016

Ah, speaking of other things, one thing we could use a few of, in case of another 'time to move the colonists out of the way again', are a couple of these:

OneirosTheWriter said:
Colony Ship 2260-Now [370m 850k t]
C1 S3 H3 L4 P1 D1
Cost [85br, 60sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-1, E-1, T-2]

I'm not saying crew them, just have a few crews cross train in them, and then immediately mothball them. It could increase our options in the next emergency.

Derek58 · Oct 28, 2016

MS-21H 'Hawke' said:
What bothers me is that he included the Centaur there, and saying 'maybe' the Miranda.... I could see doing a rolling replacement on the Constellations and MAYBEE the Connie-Bs when the Reni comes into service...but we need modern escorts, and the Miranda is not that.

Void Stalker said:
Why would we keep mirandas and scrap Centaurso. The Centaur is a superior ship to the Miranda. Also Centaur is our escort class, Renaissance is a cruiser class.

Oh whoops, mixed up the C ships. I meant to say Constellation there, my bad.

Void Stalker · Oct 28, 2016

HearthBorn said:
Ah, speaking of other things, one thing we could use a few of, in case of another 'time to move the colonists out of the way again', are a couple of these:

I'm not saying crew them, just have a few crews cross train in them, and then immediately mothball them. It could increase our options in the next emergency.

To my understanding colony command constructs those as we were requisitioning them during the crisis not building any

HearthBorn · Oct 28, 2016

Void Stalker said:
To my understanding colony command constructs those as we were requisitioning them during the crisis not building any

And I'm sure we'll requisition any and all we can next time. But the amount of colonists we can move would increase with a backup reserve of the ships.

Also, given the tech crunch we have, filling a couple of berths with zero crew fillers might be useful.

Briefvoice · Oct 28, 2016

Derek58 said:
Retiring/scrapping Constitutions, Centaurs, and maybe even Mirandas as we build Renaissances will go a long way towards alleviating that. And we can also spend pp to expand the Academy and get more Techs individually.

I guess... what do we want our final fleet composition to look like? What kind of ratio of Excelsiors to Connie-B/Renaissance to Constellations to Centaur-A/Mirandas?

Looking at the relatively short term five years from now, 2313Q1, I think we could have:
5 more Excelsiors (2 in the Explorer Corps)
6 Constitution-Bs
8 Centaur-As (including 2 refitted)

That would give us:
6 Excelsiors for Garrison Fleets
8 Centaur-As
6 Constitution-B
1 Constitution-A
8 Constellations
3 Oberths (1 other on Intelligence duty)
11 Mirandas

And at that time, I estimate we'd have to be garrisoning the Caitians and possibly the Rigellians. How would you divide up that fleet, and where should we build from there? More escorts? More cruisers? More Excelsiors sure, but how many more?

Simon_Jester · Oct 28, 2016

Analysis of officer options:

1) Did Patricia Chen already have another position in which she conferred a bonus? If so, her bonus is interesting in that it would let us speed up an explorer or two on a "war emergency" basis. The catch is, in the near future we're going to have more trouble finding crew for explorers than we will building them. We're already leaving explorer berths empty for lack of crew to operate them when they'd be finished.

2) Xursh's bonus has literally no effect on ships costing below 50 SR, reduces cost by 5 SR on ships costing between 50 and 150 SR, and saves 10 SR on ships costing between 150 and 250 SR. This does not strike me as a major advantage, because we are not especially limited on special resources, we have several medium-term options for increasing special resource income, and we just got done saving 160 SR on our next cruiser design, which is going to dwarf any benefits we're likely to see from Xursh in the 5-10 years of his tenure in the shipyard.

3) Given the Concerns That Dare Not Speak Their Name, plus the fact that warp core breaches cause exceptionally high crew losses in battle and render ships non-recoverable, Banks' bonus appeals to me. However, the point has been made that the bonus is relatively unlikely to come up until and unless we start designing ships with unreliable warp cores... and no such designs are coming down the pike for years. By the time this bonus matters, Commodore Banks may be long gone.

[] Rear Admiral Patricia Chen
...

It looks like we have enough explorers so...

[][CREW] Explorer Corps Crew

...

I basically threw my weight behind the ~~first~~ second name that wasn't Odyssey.

This is not because I have a problem with ships named Odyssey. It's because I'm backing the idea that Constitution-Bs will take "Earthly" names (since they are in some sense repaired/refitted Constitutions, and those had VERY Earthly names)...

But we will emphasize non-Earth names for new construction, to encourage a sense of Starfleet diversity. That means new Excelsiors should be named in ways that make the Vulcans, Tellarites, Andorians, and Amarki feel like they're participating.

[][NAME] S'harien

...

I believe we chose to keep a berth free for construction of an Excelsior for Earth's home fleet (I'm going to choose to call it UESPA.

) I favor this assuming we actually have the berth.

[][EARTH] Allow the Excelsior build

I don't have an opinion on the ASSIGN vote, so abstaining there.

Simon_Jester · Oct 28, 2016

OTHER VOTES EDITED IN

[X] Rear Admiral Patricia Chen
[X][CREW] Explorer Corps Crew
[X][NAME] S'harien
[X][EARTH] Allow the Excelsior build

In regards to the build plan, I'm thinking it doesn't make sense to build another Oberth if we don't have the techs to support our cruiser production.

[X][BUILD] 1 Excelsior, 1 Centaur-A, 1 Centaur-refit
-Build Excelsior in 40 Eridani A Berth A
-Refit the Centaur [Yukikaze] in Utopia Planitia 1mt berth in Q2
-Build Centaur-A in Utopia Planitia 1mt berth in Q2

pheonix89 said:
No scrapping for now. But mothballing Mirandas to free up crew for Centaur-As, Connie-Bs and Excelsiors is a damn good idea.

The problem is that Mirandas don't have a lot of techs and officers. And techs are our biggest "crunch" issue. It seems like, looking at the numbers, we'd have to scrap the entire Miranda fleet to free up enough personnel for two Excelsiors and a Centaur, basically. That's not worth it.

lbmaian said:
Doing the refit project for the Miranda in the advent of a war is a good idea, since Miranda-A and Centaur-A have the same combat stats (C/H/L). If we're running low on either SR or crew, or simply want to avoid the potential liability the Miranda is in a war, we can opt to refit 2 Miranda-As (over 2 years) instead of building a Centaur-A in 2 years.

I like this; we can effectively "borrow" crew from ourselves by putting a ship in for a refit! Sure, we'll need to find crew for the ship under refit later, but if we are unable to do that it's not the end of the universe.

[This might be a good way to address the Constellations; putting a few of them in refit in 2311 could help us avert the Great Tech Shortage]

Sightsear said:
Yep, if they [the Apiata] had a doctrine, they'd definitely be Swarm. Neat.

Honestly, I suspect the Apiata have no word for "swarm tactics." Fish, water, et cetera.

Glassware said:
It is admittedly kind of disturbing that Sulu has basically declared war on Cardassia and is conducting black ops missions without our knowledge...

The black ops part is disturbing, although the operation in question was solely targeted at one of THEIR black ops bases in OUR space that had already been used for an attack against us. Similar operations outside Federation space would be crossing the line, in my opinion.

Nothing else that Sulu's had the explorers do is an act of war against Cardassia. While the Cardassians and their proxies have repeatedly attacked us without provocation (or with provocations the Cardies made up, in the case of the Sydraxians), all our explorers have done is defend themselves, EXCEPT for the raid on the covert (Obsidian Order?) outpost.

ClawClawBite · Oct 28, 2016

If we do research "Way of the Anchor" sooner, that will increase the responsiveness of the Constellations, which I think does help in making them better inner sector patrol ships for now. That may be a factor in picking them over Centaurs, and getting the refit.

Glassware · Oct 28, 2016

Iron Wolf said:
"Never with Andorians, hmm? What about with Tellarites?" Cormai froze, his eyes fixed on the Agent. They smiled. "You know, I always did think your wife was very much so on the short side… it would be a shame if others made the connection, no?"

Man what the fuck kind of wacky illicit xenophiliac fetishes are we inadvertently spreading through the Cardassian population?

UberJJK · Oct 28, 2016

Simon_Jester said:
plus the fact that warp core breaches cause exceptionally high crew losses in battle and render ships non-recoverable

It doesn't actually help prevent breaches resulting from combat:

OneirosTheWriter said:
AlphaDelta said:

@OneirosTheWriter
Does Bank's reroll apply to combat breaches?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

No, I don't want to add another column to that table, lol.

Simon_Jester said:
In regards to the build plan, I'm thinking it doesn't make sense to build another Oberth if we don't have the techs to support our cruiser production.

You need to edit your votes into one post since the NetTally will only count the latest one.

Simon_Jester · Oct 28, 2016

EDIT: Ah, so if I vote for entirely different things in different posts, the old votes are not counted even though they haven't been superseded? Didn't know that.

Briefvoice said:
I guess... what do we want our final fleet composition to look like? What kind of ratio of Excelsiors to Connie-B/Renaissance to Constellations to Centaur-A/Mirandas?

I think a final target ratio of, oh... 4:5:6 or so sounds right.

So there'd be a large force of Excelsiors, split more or less evenly between the Explorer Corps and the regular fleet.

There'd be a force of light/medium cruisers slightly superior in numbers to the Excelsior force, which would give us roughly two or three cruisers per explorer on the home front while the remaining explorers... explore.

Then we'd have roughly one escort per cruiser, plus a few, to fill out the numbers and responsiveness. In wartime we'd probably pull the scorts from their rear area duties to go into combat first (if they can hack it), because by definition escorts are the relatively expendable ships. We call up the cruisers second (if they can hack it).

The catch is that this has to be scalable. The Federation of 2310 is 25-50% larger than the Federation of 2300, and we're going to go on integrating new members over time, plus our construction capabilities are growing by leaps and bounds.

For example, we might target a force mix in 2311 or so of roughly 12 Excelsiors, 15 cruisers, and 18 escorts. That's what we're on track to have, and honestly seems pretty good, in that it allows us to defend numerous sectors while keeping up a very strong exploratory presence.

[Note that I'm rounding numbers here. If there are 11 Excelsiors and 16 cruisers or whatever, that is not something I'd treat as breaking my plan]

But by 2315 it might look more like 16 Excelsiors, 20 cruisers (eight Constellations and twelve Constitutions, plus maybe the Renaissance prototype) and 24 escorts (the new ones being more Centaurs).

And if we can't actually manage to build a fleet that big... well, maybe my 4:5:6 ratio is ambitious and we should think in terms of 1:1:1 or 1:1:1.25 or whatever.

By 2330 those numbers might have increased even more sharply.

To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

a thirsty squirrel

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